


Altogether Too Much

by quicksilverdeancas (quicksilvermalec)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff, Dean is Shawn Mendes, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Gabriel is there, M/M, Mutual Pining, Mutually Unrequited, No Smut, Oblivious Castiel, Oblivious Dean Winchester, Sam Is So Done, Sam Ships Castiel/Dean Winchester, Sam Ships It, Shipper!Sam, friends to lovers to friends, singer!dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-05-20 00:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19366402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilverdeancas
Summary: Sam sighed and uncrossed his arms, his glare softening into a more sympathetic look. “Dean, dude,” he muttered. “You need to have a conversation. A Very Important Conversation™.”Dean looked at him evenly for eight seconds (he counted), then flatly said, “no.”#~+~#In which Dean is a singer-songwriter who's bad at feelings and he happens to be in love with his best friend Castiel. He's also sleeping with him, but that's totally irrelevant.





	1. Needle in the Thread

**Author's Note:**

> Most of this songwriting stuff is straight out of my own experiences/writing process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~For the sake of this fic, let's say Dean is 26 (so S1), Cas is 27 and Sam is 22.~~
> 
>  
> 
> Haha ignore that. I decided later that I'd rather make this more ambiguous. They're as old as they are in your brain. 
> 
> This could be read as an AU but it could also be read as a non-AU. It's intended as non-AU, but it's intentionally ambiguous. I hope you enjoy!

It was Sam’s fault, Dean insisted.

(It wasn’t; it wasn’t anyone’s fault, not really, but Sam had set the chain of events in motion so so help him God, Dean was going to blame it on his brother until his dying breath.)

Sam was on his stupid laptop again, doing _research_ again. He clicked on something, probably not something good, judging by the way it was immediately followed by a sound that made Dean freeze with a forkful of pie suspended halfway to his mouth.

The opening notes of _Intoxicating_ by DV.

He sat the plate on the counter and stood up, turning slowly to look at his brother, who was smirking at him with raised eyebrows. And then the lyrics started.

 _The heat of these summer nights_  
_The smell of cigarette smoke burnin’ our throats_  
_You never even say goodbye_  
_You just leave me here to die_  
_Slowly, piece by piece, no peace of mind_

Cas, who had been reading in the corner, looked up in confusion at the sound of the voice. “Dean, is that… you?” he asked, and Dean had to seriously fight the urge to slam his forehead down on the table.

“Yep,” he announced to the room. “That’s me. On that recording. Singing.” He flinched at his own words.

Sam smirked wider at Dean’s obvious discomfort. “Dude, is this where you disappear to all the time?” he gestured vaguely to his computer. “To go sing concerts?”

Dean nodded. “And Sammy,” he said seriously, pointing a stern finger in his brother’s direction. “You can’t make fun of me for this.”

“I would never!” Sam exclaimed in mock offense, chuckling at the answering eyeroll. “But really though, it’s just surprising is all.” He tapped the spacebar to pause the music. “It’s so… not you. Not what I’d expect from you anyway, and I’ve known you since you were four. Caught me off-guard.”

Dean felt the sudden, overwhelming desire to defend his music. “Hey, just ‘cause I like Led Zeppelin and Metallica doesn’t mean I can actually _write_ that kind of music. I just write what I feel, and most of what I feel is love songs. Sue me.” He shrugged and sat back to down to continue eating his pie.

Cas stood and walked over to place himself behind Sam so he could look at the screen over his shoulder. “Are there more of these?” he asked.

Dean nodded, resigned. “Yeah, whatever. You can watch anything that’s on my YouTube channel. I’m not ashamed of what I write.”

Of course, he said that _before_ he wrote his four best songs (or what he liked to call ‘the Castiel Collection’ – but only in his own head.)

#~+~#

Later that same night, Cas came into Dean’s bedroom. When Dean looked up at him, his greeting died in his throat at the hungry expression on his face and the way he was slowly advancing on Dean, like he was his prey.

He fell on top of the younger boy, kissing him wildly, and Dean couldn’t breathe. When they finally resurfaced, Cas whispered huskily, “I want to have sex with you.”

Dean could feel a huge lump forming in his throat, so he just nodded until he managed to choke out, “yeah, okay. Definitely.”

#~+~#

Just because it was Sam’s fault (it wasn’t) didn’t mean that it was all bad things that Sam had caused.

To be fair, Sam was responsible for Dean getting laid. Repeatedly. By a guy he was completely and totally whipped for. Unfortunately, that just meant that Sam was also responsible for Dean getting his stupid, overexcited heart broken.

This was why Dean tried to avoid having and/or confronting feelings in the first place.

#~+~#

Tl;dr they slept together. All the time. Dean and Cas both agreed that they shouldn’t tell Sam, because there was literally no reason that he needed to know about his brother’s friend with benefits.

It was exactly like Dean had always imagined, always wanted – minus his ‘guilty fantasies’ like the random kissing and holding hands in public and actual _dating_.

But it was really good sex. Totally mind blowing (on both ends, if Dean was reading it right.) Dean was getting the intimacy he’d craved for so long, so selfishly, and it was so good that Dean couldn’t bring himself to listen to the tiny voice of reason in the back of his mind that was screaming at him that sleeping with Cas was a _really very bad_ idea.

One night, around 11:00, just when Dean was getting into the ‘pleasantly smashed’ part of the evening, a shorter blond seemed to materialize out of thin air right next to him.

“So I’ve heard that you’re in love with my brother,” he announced by way of greeting. Dean gagged on his drink.

“How do you _do_ this shit, Gabe?” he spluttered incredulously, but he received only a smile in return.

“So, is it true?”

Dean sighed, understanding he wasn’t getting out of this without admitting to it. “Yes, I’m in love with Cas. That what you want?”

Gabe smirked. “Pretty much,” he muttered. Then, “you should go for it.”

“What, and get my heart shattered?” Dean took another drink of his whiskey. “Yeah, no fuckin’ thank you. I’m good with what I have.”

“The ‘friendship’ and the mad, painful pining?” Gabriel asked, sounding unconvinced. Dean just shrugged.

“Sex is pretty good, too.”

“Oh, that is an utterly, fantastically, _colossally_ terrible idea,” Gabriel told him matter-of-factly. “Don’t ever become friends with benefits with someone you want to date, it always ends in complete disastrous heartbreak. That’s the third rule of FWB, right after ‘you don’t talk about FWB’ and 'you do not talk about FWB'.”

Dean rolled his eyes, trying to pretend that Gabriel’s words didn’t get to him. It was easy to ignore the sentiment ‘this is a bad idea’ in the moment and when it was coming from his own head, but it was much, much harder when he had an external source reinforcing that.

He’d had way too much to drink, as well, so he blurted out the first thing that he thought.

“I’m’na tell him.”

Gabriel actually, full-on, flat-out laughed at that, clapping him on the shoulder like they were old buddies (they kind of were). “You do that, man,” he said, then stood and walked away.

Dean sighed and drank three more drinks, then hailed a taxi back to the bunker.

He wrote all of _Nothin’ Holdin’ Me Back_ in an hour, and then he went over to Cas (asleep on the couch, having passed out in the middle of a movie with Sam) and sighed, looking down at him.

 _I’ll do it in the morning_ , he told himself firmly, _when I don’t have to wake him up._

He didn’t do it in the morning.

#~+~#

He did, however, revise and release _Nothin’ Holdin’ Me Back_ and it became his first huge hit.

Small victories.

#~+~#

After that, every time Cas kissed him, every brush of hands, even the most innocent of touches caused Dean’s mind to scream _WARNING DANGER BAD IDEA_ until he couldn’t take it anymore.

He got Cas alone one day to talk to him and suddenly realized that he hadn’t planned out or in any way prepared for what he was going to say. He ended up awkwardly stuttering out, “I- I can’t do this anymore, Cas.”

“Can’t do what, Dean?” Cas inquired patiently.

“The- the kissing and the sex and the staying the night in each other’s beds I can’t it’s- it hurts, Cas.”

Cas looked at him scrutinizingly, like a puzzle he was trying to solve that he’d lost the lid to. After a long moment, he said, “okay, Dean,” and if Dean detected a hint of sadness in his voice, he convinced himself that he was imagining it.

#~+~#

“Sammy, I need your help,” Dean pleaded. Sam looked up at him and immediately implicitly understood that this was a serious matter and not something he should joke about.

“Okay,” Sam said, shifting in his chair and indicating that Dean could, you know, sit down. “What’s up, man?”

“I… I’m in love with Cas. And I sort of hooked up with Cas. A lot of times. And… now I’m not banging him anymore.”

“So wait,” Sam said, obviously still trying to wrap his brain around what Dean had just confessed to him. “You were getting fucked on the regular by Castiel – yes, I’ll be bleaching my mouth at the conclusion of this conversation – and _you_ ended it because you were in _love_ with him?”

Dean pursed his lips, not looking his brother in the eye. “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”

“Woah,” Sam muttered. “I can’t believe you actually got with him… sorta.”

Dean sighed and dropped his head. “Yeah… I shouldn’t have. I should’ve just kept pining in solitude until I got over him.”

“Do you really think you’re going to get over him?” Sam asked him genuinely.

There was a long pause, and then Dean said, “no, probably not. Do you think it’s possible?”

Sam looked at him and exhaled softly. “I don’t know, Dean,” he admitted. “I really don’t know.”

#~+~#

Dean took almost all his meals away from the other two men in the bunker, electing to eat in his own room instead, for almost a week. Once he absolutely could not hide from Cas anymore, he started to rejoin his roommates for lunch and dinner.

The first lunch Dean spent with them after his not-breakup with Cas was an unbearably awkward affair. Sam spoke to each of them in turns but never both at once, and they didn’t say anything to each other.

Afterward, Dean pulled Sam aside and hissed, “ _fuck_!”

Sam crossed his arms and glared at him as he ranted. “I think I pissed him off, man. God, why did I agree to that, it was such a bad idea! I knew I was gonna screw up our friendship but I went along with it anyway and look where it’s fucking landed me.”

Sam sighed and uncrossed his arms, his glare softening into a more sympathetic look. “Dean, dude,” he muttered. “You need to have a conversation. A Very Important Conversation™.”

Dean looked at him evenly for eight seconds (he counted), then flatly said, “no.”

Sam knew better than to argue. He’d seen the angry, stubborn determination that appeared in his brother’s eyes, and he knew when Dean got that look that there was virtually no way to change his mind.

He let Dean walk away.

Five days later, Dean made it all the way to a hand half-raised to knock on Cas’ door, made it hallway to ‘want a quickie?’ before he remembered they weren’t doing that anymore.

So he went into his own room and wrote _Stitches_ instead.


	2. Enough to Keep Me Guessing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean took Sam’s advice… kind of? He did talk to Cas, just not about being in love with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the songwriting stuff is my actual songwriting process. I talk to myself _a lot_ when I write stuff.

Dean took Sam’s advice… kind of? He did talk to Cas, just not about being in love with him.

It was a fairly quick-and-easy-and-painless conversation, definitely not worth the buildup he’d created in his head.

“Cas, man, I don’t want to keep avoiding you,” he’d admitted. “Are you pissed at me?”

Cas had sighed. “No, Dean. I guess I just thought- no, never mind. Can we just go back to being friends again?”

Dean had smiled in relief at that. “Sounds great,” he’d agreed.

They still had movie nights. They still lost money to Sam at poker. They still sat up and talked and joked and laughed at each other until after midnight. And Dean still managed to tamp down the fire raging in his chest at the chance to be _close_ to Cas – to hug him and hold his hand and kiss him without it leading to sex, just because he could – every single time.

If Sam noticed the change between them, he never said anything about it.

And so it went. Cas and Dean were still best friends, Sam was _not_ a third wheel, and Dean repressed his emotions.

In other words, nothing had fucking changed.

#~+~#

Dean loved his family.

He loved it when Cas made a particularly good joke and Dean could chuckle lightly as he watched his brother double over in a fit of uncontrollable hysterics. He loved watching Sam’s face turn bright red and Cas grow a self-satisfied little smirk.

He loved that they would listen to him and never told him that what he was feeling was stupid and always supported it, cheesy and cliché as it sounded. He could go to them, he could talk to them, and he would be loved, and he would be safe.

He loved that they trusted him. They wouldn’t lie to him about their own issues, they wouldn’t tell him ‘it’s not a big deal’ or ‘it doesn’t matter’. They would come to him when they needed him, because they knew they were loved and they were safe.

It goes without saying that he would never admit to any of this out loud.

However, Dean didn’t love _everything_ about his family.

For instance, he hated the way that they both knew him so well they could sometimes identify his emotions even before he did. (Thank god Cas hadn’t picked up on the whole ‘love’ thing yet.)

He also hated how infuriating they got when they were right about something. How when they said ‘you need to deal with x, y, z’ all grimly, like they were sending him to his death and not coming with him, and wouldn’t leave him alone about it until he did it, he couldn’t ignore them because it was true.

The thing he hated most, though, was how they brought his guard down. Sometimes he said things to them that he hadn’t even known were true before they came out of his mouth.

Things like, “nothing really matters.”

Not in a depression way, not really. And not in a Freddie Mercury kind of way either. “Nothing really matters” as in “I’m kind of indifferent to the entire world”.

Sam and Cas both stared at him in shocked surprise when he said that out loud.

“Why?” his baby brother asked. Dean took a deep breath and said the first thing that came into his head because that was usually the most honest.

“’Cause I’m in love with someone who doesn’t love me back.”

His family continued to stare at him until his brain caught up to his mouth.

“Holy shit,” he whispered, his brain suddenly flooding with meanings and rhyme schemes and potential titles. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go write a song.”

He scrambled out of his chair and almost sprinted into his Writing Room.

Sam smirked sideways at Cas. “We’re totally getting in on this, right?”

Cas nodded, smiling mischievously, and the two of them ran down the hall after Dean.

#~+~#

Dean made it almost too easy. The door was ajar, so all Sam had to do was push it open a little wider and stand in the doorway with Cas.

Dean was sitting in his chair, facing away from the door, with his guitar across his lap and a music stand in front of him.

“So, little songwriter-Dean-voice-in-my-head, how do I want to do this?” he asked out loud.

Then he took an audible deep breath and played a few chords before stopping. “That’s… not great.” He tried again, and stopped again. “Also bad.”

He took his hands off the guitar for a minute to run them through his hair. “Wait… what if- I’m thinking about this in a very soprano-line type of way; lots of pitch changes. I should be thinking alto line – same note forever and ever.”

Sam would’ve bet any amount of money that his brother was grinning like a maniac.

He grabbed the neck of his guitar again and played a pattern of the same pitch several times in a row before ascending a step at a time. When he finished, he threw up his hands and shouted, “yes! Okay…” he leaned forward to write something on the blank staff paper that he always kept on his music stand.

“So… lyrics,” he muttered once he’d straightened up.

He took a deep breath and started to sing in time with each strum.

“I can’t write one song that’s not about you, can’t sleep without dreamin’ about you, is it too late to tell you that, everything means nothin’ if I can’t have you.”

He shouted ecstatically. “And I have a chorus. Fuck yeah! So… do I want a pre-chorus? I don’t know, we’ll have to see.”

He played around with his guitar a little more before finding what he apparently thought was a satisfactory chord progression for the verses. He hummed out a verse, then hummed through the chorus before pausing thoughtfully.

“Yeah, that feels a little too abrupt. I think this thing definitely needs a pre-chorus.”

He figured out what he wanted it to sound like with minimal struggle.

“Oh, I’m good at keepin’ my distance I know, that you’re the feelin’ I’m missin’ you know, that I hate to admit it, but everything means nothing if I can’t have you. I can’t write one song- yes! Perfect, beautiful, gorgeous, okay…”

He took another deep breath. “So my inspiration for that has just about run its course… I’ll come back to writing later.”

He moved on to polishing up the chorus and Sam and Cas snuck out of the room.

#~+~#

“Who do you think that song was about?” Cas asked with what amounted to much more than idle curiousity.

“We can’t know for sure,” Sam replied honestly, despite having a _very damn good_ idea.

Cas was obviously trying very hard (and unfortunately failing) to keep the hurt and hopeless expression off his face. “Do you think there was… someone else, and that’s why he broke of the… thing we were doing?”

“I don’t think so,” Sam said just as honestly. “I think Dean would’ve told me if that was the case.”

“But do you _know_?” Cas challenged.

Sam sighed. “No, Cas, I don’t.”

#~+~#

Dean spent several hours every day for a few weeks on _If I Can’t Have You_ , as he’d dubbed his new single (or, in his head, ‘the Ultimate Destiel Song’).

He still made sure to eat and he still talked with Cas and Sam into the early hours of the morning, but most of his free time was spent revising, editing, and polishing – all except the first verse.

The first verse was the last thing Dean got written. He'd been seriously struggling to get one more verse, and then he went on a three-day trip to Toronto for a concert. Because screw localism.

He sat along the shore of Lake Ontario and watched the water, and it was beautiful, but he wasn't even really paying attention. His mind had gone on a wild tangent about how the water was the exact shade of Cas' eyes, and he was just thinking about how his friend was so much more beautiful than this view. And then words sprang, unbidden to his kind, and he began to sing under his breath.

"I'm in Toronto and I got this view, but I might as well be in a hotel room." He paused for a second, then sang it again, modifying the notes just slightly. "I like that," he said to no one in particular before humming out the rest of what he'd already outlined for the second verse.

He toyed with a few sentences in his head before settling on "it doesn't matter cause I'm so consumed" but left himself completely stumped as to the resolution of the verse.

That is, until he slid into his bed that night and engaged in his nightly ritual of pulling out his phone and rereading his old text conversations with Castiel. Once he realized what he was doing, he paused.

"Spendin' all my nights reading texts from you."

It was so perfect for the song Dean felt a little ridiculous. But he allowed himself to feel ridiculous as he added the lyrics into the note file on his phone to sing along to later when he had his guitar.

The next morning, during the few hours he had between waking up and when he needed to pack up and check out of his hotel, he played his guitar, strumming through the song and finding inconsistencies and places he could make it flow better.

The last thing he did was change ‘can’t sleep without dreamin’ about you’ to ‘can’t drink without thinkin’ about you’.

On his way home he stopped by his recording studio and got the whole thing done in one shot.

He released it six days later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 will be posted tomorrow I THINK.
> 
> Love,  
> -Sil


	3. I'll Stop Time for You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So basically I'm gay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I was driving.

The day after _If I Can't Have You_ was released to the public, Dean made a video about it (De-vines, his fans called them, because they were "simply divine". People were weird, especially on social media).

He opened his fanmail email address and found that he had over a hundred requests for a De-vine about his newest single. He quickly clicked "Mark All Read" and closed the tab.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair, and pulled out his phone, plastering a smile on his face and holding the device at arms' length.

"Hey there internet, it's Dean again, and I have a news flash for you: I'm still adorable." He grinned his winning smile at the camera.

"A lot of you wanted to hear about _If I Can't Have You_ , so I guess I'll talk about it a little. I wrote this song for..."

He trailed off and made a mental note to edit it out. He started over.

"So basically I'm gay," he told his audience. "Not, like, full-on gay, but I'm bisexual so close enough. I'm in love with a dude, so that should be good enough to qualify me as gay, right?" He swallowed. "I wrote this single for that guy that I'm in love with, because I highly doubt that he'd ever feel the same way so I've resigned myself to pining in silence! Such is my life."

He uttered a distracted sign-off and ended the recording.

"So... that's on the internet," he muttered to himself, running both hands through his hair. "Forever. Where anyone could see it. Not that I was doing much to maintain the rude that I was straight." He barked a harsh laugh. "Oh, this will be fun. I can't wait until Sammy sees that."

#~+~#

Ten weeks after the release of _If I Can't Have You_ , Sam woke up to an empty bunker. And that was strange.

Most days, Dean wasn't up until 8:30-9ish and he flat-out refused to speak to anyone until he'd had his first mug of coffee.

But he wasn't in his bedroom, there were no bathroom lights on, and he wasn't banging around in the kitchen or main living space.

When Sam emerged from the residential quarters area of the bunker, wary and unnerved at the lack of a pain in the ass, he found in his brother's place a folded piece of paper - a card - on the table, with another thinner paper rectangle next to it.

On the front, the card read in Dean's cramped and hurried scrawl, _hey Sammy. I'm singing in Seattle on Wednesday. It's yours if you want it._

Sam looked more closely at the other piece of paper. It was a ticket to a DV concert. He flipped the card open and another ticket fell out. There was only one sentence inside.

_If you do come, bring Cas with you ; )_

#~+~#

Cas looked up when something blocked the small amount of light filtering through his door.

Sam was standing in the doorway, grinning at him, two pieces of paper fanned out in his hand.

"Road trip?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this short semi-filler was worth it xD.
> 
> Love,  
> -Sil


	4. One Song That's Not About You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I love you." 
> 
> They shouldn't have been precious words. They should have been cherished and present and _common_ , so common in Dean's vernacular. They should have been right up there with 'awesome' and 'fuck me' because Dean, although he wasn't great at showing it, had spent his entire life in awe, in self-deprecation, and above all, in love.
> 
> #~+~#
> 
> In which Dean is a singer-songwriter who's bad at feelings and he happens to be in love with his best friend Castiel. He's also sleeping with him, but that's totally irrelevant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry that my update schedule got all fucked up. I had a family trip that I 100% forgot about until like, Thursday night (we hit the road on Friday morning so I basically just remembered it was happening when it was time to pack) but anyway I didn't have access to my computer so I could only post on my phone and posting on my phone is a NIGHTMARE. I apologize.
> 
> Enjoy the final chapter, though! This one's probably the longest, mostly because it contains so many song lyrics.
> 
> I should warn you, I've only ever been to one concert. It was a Panic! At the Disco concert, so I'm basing Dean off of Brendon Urie in this chapter. ( _Treat You Better_ is DV's _I Write Sins Not Tragedies_. He literally didn't sing that song at all at the concert I went to. He just held the mic out to the audience and they sang it.)

Wednesday rolled around and Dean was sitting in his ready room, fidgeting uselessly with his hands, trying to calm his nerves.

Cause why the fuck would he be nervous? He’d never been this afraid before a show in the past.

(Of course, he knew why. He knew it was because he had no idea if Cas and Sam were even going to show up, he knew it was because he was afraid they wouldn’t, he knew it was because he was afraid that they _would_.)

He stared at himself in the full-length mirror. He was wearing a dark green Oregon Ducks t-shirt, straight ripped blue jeans, a length of pink-purple-and-blue yarn wrapped around his wrist to represent his sexuality, a pair of dangly earrings (a spoon and a fork, because why the fuck not?), and a thin black string around his neck with a small notebook attached to it.

He played with his hair a little, then sighed in frustration and gave up. He grabbed his microphone and strolled out into the backstage area. Once he heard his name, he took one final deep breath and ran out onto the stage.

The first thing that happened once he got onto the stage was that his eyes flicked directly to the seats he’d reserved for his brother and best friend.

They were occupied.

“YOU CAME!” he wanted to scream, but he was onstage, meaning he was performing, so he didn’t.

Instead he smiled at his family, at the fact that they had _showed up for him_ , and started in on his setlist.

#~+~#

About an hour into the show, he was finally getting into his Greatest Hits.

His accompanist played the opening notes of _Treat You Better_ and an uproar rose from the crowd. He smiled, sang only the first line, and then held the mic out to his fans, because they were singing it plenty loud enough for him.

As they got through the first chorus, Dean smirked at his baby brother and basically dived forward to land on his stomach on the edge of the stage, right arm extended.

“Go on, Sammy. Sing!” he shouted over the crowd.

“Dean,” Sam protested. Dean gave him a look, and he rolled his eyes but complied. A camera from the stage zoomed in on the younger Winchester’s face, projecting it at 1,000% on a screen above the stage.

“I just wanna give you the lovin’ that you’re missin’, baby just to wake up with you,” Sam sang halfheartedly. Dean took pity on him and grabbed the microphone back, but not before winking at him. Sam just gave him bitchface #13; _I Want to Fucking Strangle You._

Once the song ended, Dean assumed the most cheerful personality he possibly could and started in on his little spiel about _Stitches._

“So, for those of you who don’t know, I am bisexual,” he announced, then paused for the huge cheer he knew was about to tear through the crowd, especially the ones wearing Pride flags. He knew he had a huge LGBT+ fanbase.

“Yes! Thank you! Yeah, I’m bi, and I, uh, I made a vid, after I released _If I Can’t Have You_ , I made a vid about this guy I’m in love with. And he, uh- we had a… a thing, I guess you could call it, and I broke it off because I was being an idiot, and then there was this one day when I was just feelin’ really, really shitty, and I was _this close_ to goin’ to him about it and then I remembered we didn’t do that anymore, so instead I went to my own room and wrote this song in a frenzy of tired emotion at like, 11 o’ clock at night.”

#~+~#

_Got a feelin’ that I’m goin’ under_  
_But I know that I’ll make it out alive_  
_If I quit callin’ you my lover_  
_Move on_

_You watch me bleed until I can’t breathe_  
_I’m shakin’, fallin’ onto my knees_  
_And now that I’m without your kisses_  
_I’ll be needin’ stitches_  
_Trippin’ over myself_  
_Achin’, beggin’ you to come help_  
_And now that I’m without your kisses_  
_I’ll be needin’ stitches_

_Needle in the thread_  
_Gotta getchu outta my head_  
_Needle in the thread_  
_Gonna wind up dead_

_Needle in the thread_  
_Gotta getchu outta my head_  
_Needle in the thread_  
_Gonna wind up dead_

_Needle in the thread_  
_Gotta getchu outta my head_  
_Needle in the thread_  
_Gonna wind up dead_

_Needle in the thread_  
_Gotta getchu outta my head_  
_Getchu outta my head_

#~+~#

“And then of course, I had a day where I almost drunkenly confessed to him, I was like, ‘I wanna tell him, because he deserves to know, and he’s my best friend and I hate hiding things from him’, and then I saw him sleeping, and I was just like, I dunno, like he was just so… cute? I didn’t want to wake him up. So I was like ‘I’ll tell him tomorrow’ and then I woke up the next morning and I was back to doubting myself, back to confining my emotions to a tiny little box in my head where I didn’t have to deal with them. But I wrote this, right before my aborted confession.”

#~+~#

_Cause if we lost our minds_  
_And we took it way too far_  
_I know we’d be alright_  
_I know we would be alright_

_If you were by my side_  
_And we stumbled in the dark_  
_I know we’d be alright_  
_I know we would be alright_

_Cause if we lost our minds_  
_And we took it way too far_  
_I know we’d be alright_  
_I know we would be alright_

_If you were by my side_  
_And we stumbled in the dark_  
_I know we’d be alright_  
_We would be alright_

_Oh, I been shakin’_  
_I love it when you go crazy_  
_You take all my inhibitions_  
_Baby there’s nothin’ holdin’ me back_  
_You take me places_  
_That tear up my reputation_  
_Manipulate my decisions_  
_Baby there’s nothin’ holding me back_

_There’s nothin’ holdin’ me back_

_I feel_  
_So free_  
_When you’re_  
_With me_  
_Baby_

_Baby there’s nothin’ holdin’ me back_

#~+~#

“And then there was this song. The ultimate DV song, by all accounts, including my own. This is a song that I poured my heart and soul into, I had this moment where I just realized that I literally don’t care about a goddamn thing if I can’t be with this guy, and it spurred a whole idea, and I wrote it all, and it was amazing, and I kept writing and rewriting it until I can honestly say that it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. If the guy I wrote it for knew it was for him, I think he’d like it. I also think he’d reject me epically, but… I don’t know, sometimes people surprise you.”

He took a very deep, long breath. In, then out. And then he signaled for the music and began to belt.

_I can’t write one song that’s not about you_  
_Can't drink without thinkin' about you_  
_Is it too late to tell you that_  
_Everything means nothing if I can't have you_

_I'm in Toronto and I got this view_  
_But I might as well be in a hotel room, yeah_  
_It doesn't matter 'cause I'm so consumed_  
_Spending all my nights reading texts from you_

_Oh, I'm good at keepin' my distance, I kno_  
_That you're the feelin' I'm missing, you know_  
_That I hate to admit it_  
_But everything means nothin' if I can't have you_

_I can't write one song that's not about you_  
_Can't drink without thinkin' about you_  
_Is it too late to tell you that_  
_Everything means nothing if I can't have you_

_I can't write one song that's not about you_  
_Can't drink without thinkin' about you_  
_Is it too late to tell you that_  
_Everything means nothing if I can't have you_

_I'm so sorry that my timing's off_  
_But I can't move on if we're still gonna talk_  
_Is it wrong for me to not want half?_  
_I want all of you, all the strings attached_

_Oh, I'm good at keepin' my distance, I know_  
_That you're the feelin' I'm missing, you know_  
_That I hate to admit it_  
_But everything means nothin' if I can't have you_

_I can't write one song that's not about you_  
_Can't drink without thinkin' about you_  
_Is it too late to tell you that_  
_Everything means nothing if I can't have you_

_I can't write one song that's not about you_  
_Can't drink without thinkin' about you_  
_Is it too late to tell you that_  
_Everything means nothing if I can't have you_

_I'm trying to move on_  
_Forget you, but I hold on_  
_Everything means nothing_  
_Everything means nothing, babe_  
_I'm trying to move on_  
_Forget you, but I hold on_  
_Everything means nothing if I can't have you, no_

_I can't write one song that's not about you_  
_Can't drink without thinkin' about you_  
_Is it too late to tell you that_  
_Everything means nothing if I can't have you_

_I can't write one song that's not about you_  
_Can't drink without thinkin' about you_  
_Is it too late to tell you that_  
_Everything means nothing if I can't have you_

#~+~#

When the concert was over, Sam and Cas met him backstage.

“Dude, is this what _all_ your concerts are like?” Sam asked excitedly. “Can I start coming to them more regularly?”

“Don’t jizz yourself, man,” Dean muttered affectionately, immediately followed by, “and you’re gonna have to start payin’ for yourself, little brother.”

Sam gave him a betrayed look. “I thought you loved me.”

Dean shrugged. “Money in my pocket is money in my pocket, doesn’t matter who it’s from.”

Sam stuck his tongue out at him and Dean snorted.

Cas was the one who finally intervened. “Dean, who was that ‘guy’ you were talking about?”

Dean shut up pretty quick. Cas sighed in exasperation.

“You’re my best friend, Dean. You can tell me anything.”

Dean sighed. “Yeah, I know.” He took a deep breath. "So, I'm kinda... maybe... a little bit... in love with you," Dean admitted, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly and avoiding Cas and Sam's eyes.

"With- with Sam?" Cas stuttered out, pointing with both hands at the subject of his sentence.

Dean looked at him then, incredulous. "The fuck kinda bullshit question is that?" Because seriously, what kind of world was it that could teach Castiel that Dean being in love with _his own brother_ was a more feasible reality than Dean being in love with him?

Cas looked down awkwardly. Dean stared at him in disbelief. “With _you_ , Cas! You stupid, ridiculous- _moron_!”

“Oh,” was all his friend said, and all the incredulity and borderline-anger that Dean had been feeling seconds before melted away, replaced with something much, much closer to pain and rejection.

“Uh… yeah. You know what, Cas, I don’t have a hotel room here or anything, I was just planning on driving back tonight, so I’m gonna hit the road. I’ll see you back at the bunker.”

He turned and walked away from Cas, not letting himself look back at him, because he knew if he did he’d get his heart broken all over again.

“Uh, I’m just gonna…” Sam gestured vaguely with his hands, looking between his friend and his brother awkwardly. “I’m gonna ride with him.”

He chased after and quickly caught up with his brother, who didn’t look at him or say anything to him.

“You want to talk about it?” Sam offered as Dean wrenched open the driver door of the Impala with more force than was strictly necessary.

“No. I fucking don’t.”

#~+~#

Dean avoided Cas like the plague for a good six or seven months – not that it was really all that hard. All he had to do was schedule a massive nationwide tour and sing in every state in the country. But then the tour was over and he had to come home, and he didn’t want to admit it, not even to Sam, not even to _himself,_ but he was terrified of what would happen when he did.

The flight back in from DC was hell, and not even just because he was in a giant metal death trap 36,000 feet above the surface of the eart going speeds that no human being was ever designed to move at.

When he made it back to the airport, he sighed in relief and allowed himself a minute to relish in having his feet on solid ground, and then he grabbed his luggage.

He expected Sam to be waiting for him, but instead, there was Cas, with a sign that said in an immaculate print, _Asshole Winchester_.

Dean didn’t let himself smile at the sight of the familiar face, the face he loved, with the ever-present sex hair (even though Dean wasn’t sure he’d ever gotten laid) and the ridiculous trenchcoat that only he could pull off.

Cas didn’t smile at him, either.

But once they were in the car, on their way back to the bunker, after driving in tense, charged silence for half an hour, Cas spoke up suddenly.

“Say it again.”

“What- _what?”_ Dean spluttered.

“If you meant what you said, at the concert – which, by the way, you never let me talk to you about because you were too busy being emotionally stunted and terrible at communicating – then I want to hear it again.” Cas’ voice was steady and even, and it sounded like he’d practiced this a couple of times before Dean arrived.

Dean had a very, very brief internal gay panicked crisis.

He didn’t want to get rejected. He didn’t want Castiel to laugh in his face and tell him that he was an idiot for falling for his friend with benefits (even though he’d been long gone for Cas by the time that arrangement started). He didn’t want to watch Cas shatter his heart yet again.

But he wasn’t going to lie. So he inhaled deeply and said the three small words that had the potential to bring his entire world crashing down on him.

"I love you."

They shouldn't have been precious words. They should have been cherished and present and _common_ , so common in Dean's vernacular. They should have been right up there with 'awesome' and 'fuck me' because Dean, although he wasn't great at showing it, had spent his entire life in awe, in self-deprecation, and above all, in love.

And when he said those three words to Cas, it shouldn't have been a huge goddamn feat. But it was, because Dean was an emotionally constipated jerk, as Sam had told him many times (to which he'd always replied, "and you're a nosy, nerdy, pushy little bitch. We've always been fucked up like this, Sammy.")

And Dean loved Sam. He loved Sam so much he couldn't breathe sometimes, in fear for his only brother's life, because their job was dangerous.

Dean also loved Cas. He loved Cas altogether too much, and he shouldn't have pushed Cas away when he did, and he should have been honest. He loved Cas so much it hurt, but most of that was probably because he was so good at denying himself the things he wanted.

So when he said those words to his angel, he was putting a lot of himself on the line. He was being more vulnerable than he'd ever been with anyone who wasn't Sam.

And it all paid off when Castiel's face lit up and he breathed, "I love you too, Dean Winchester."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! The end of the story!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this, it was _super_ fun to write. And I think it's to my credit that I was able to read the dialogue in ~~Dean Winchester's~~ Jensen Ackles' voice the whole time.
> 
> I hope this ending was worth it!
> 
> Love,  
> -Sil

**Author's Note:**

> So here we go! Part 1 of 4! The rest is already written, I just have to type it up. I'll post one a day until Saturday.
> 
> Love,  
> -Sil


End file.
